Multi-radio platforms (MRP) are becoming more common, in which a single wireless device is able to communicate in different networks using different protocols. One example is a device that can communicate in a WiMAX network and also communicate in a WiFi network, as long as the device's communications in one network don't interfere with the device's communications in the other network. The MRP may communicate at different regularly scheduled intervals in each network, intervals which unfortunately may not be compatible with each other. For example, a WiFi network controller may transmit beacons at predicable intervals to synchronize network timing, announce queued-up traffic for the devices in that network, and/or announce other information that the devices in that network need to know. A WiMAX network may schedule the MRP for a virtual ‘sleep mode’ at its own regularly scheduled intervals, thus allowing the MRP a period of silence in the WiMAX network so the MRP may use that time to transmit its WiFi beacons without causing inter-network interference. Predictable beacon intervals are important because they allow the various client devices to go into a power-saving non-operational mode when they are idle and only wake up long enough to listen for the next beacon.
Unfortunately, different types of networks may use communication intervals that are not integer multiples of each other, so that the beacons and beacon-listening periods in the WiFi network may not be in sync with the sleep periods in the WiMAX network. Even if the WiMAX sleep periods and WiFi beacons start out at the same time, the out-of-sync timing between the two networks may eventually cause the WiFi beacons to fall outside the WiMAX sleep periods, resulting in possible inter-network interference between the two networks.